


for our own sakes

by labocat



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Cannibalism, Consent, Gen, consensual cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 09:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21268988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/pseuds/labocat
Summary: We never know what’s wrong without the pain





	for our own sakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).

The smell of meat cooking breaks him from his listlessness.

There shouldn’t be meat in this place, this frozen wasteland where hopes and men go to die, that rejects any not born to it. There hasn’t been meat for months, not tainted from the can nor drenched in so much salt that it may well have been born from the tears of their despair.

This smells of Sundays, of roast and everything this place is not and for the briefest moment between dreaming and consciousness, Harry can almost believe he’s made it home. That the nightmare has ended, the passage found, the happy days in the sun behind them, just another story to tell as the dishes are passed.

Then he opens his eyes and Hickey is before him, holding a plate - none of the other men in their broken camp would enter his tent or what passes for one these days without his say. Some honor remains among thieves.

Hickey is crouched low to the ground so that their faces are level, his sharp, all-seeing gaze all the sharper for their starvation, which Harry himself has helped end. He rolls over, as if not seeing Hickey will help. In this place, ration leaves behind only desires.

“Now, doctor, surely you want to at least benefit from your hard work. I know the decision was excruciating.”

Harry would rather not think about that work. Until now, he hadn’t minded the sound of his knife cutting into flesh, saw cracking bone - it was all for the sake of learning, for knowledge - but now the whisper of the blade is on the wind, haunting him like the voices of the men he’s cut into. 

At his silence, Hickey continues. “You can’t have eaten for, what...two days? I’ve seen you avoid the tins - you know better than the rest of us what they hold. You’ve delivered us - who is there to judge tout here? We have taken our fate into our own hands and we will live! Thanks to you, there is hope! Surely that is worth some celebration.”

Harry knows as well as Hickey does that Gibson could have been butchered by anyone else. Perhaps not as well, but it is his submission Hickey wants, not his skills. Gibson had outlived his usefulness, for all that Harry would have sworn there had been finer feelings than comraderie. _He_ is useful to Hickey now, his presence useful, giving Hickey credibility with the men he could not hold on his own.

Harry knows he holds some semblance of power, but does not know how to wield it. He will not use a dead man’s hand as a scepter.

“It’s noble, or at least you think so. If it bothers you so much, no one has to know, so long as we make it home to tell our own story. But it’s staying alive long enough to tell that story, not having anyone try to make a best fucking guess from their comfortable quarters what happened here. You don’t want anyone telling your story, doctor, or else you wouldn’t have gotten all that fancy learning. You want to create stories, not just read them. That’s why you’re at the end of the world, shivering along with us barely knowing our letters well enough to make our mark. 

“But mark my words, doctor. We’ll make our mark yet, and either you’re with us or not. You’ve already made your choice, you just need to admit it to yourself. Now, be a good boy, and eat. Eat and live.”

Harry stares at the canvas wall that hardly holds back the cold, thinks of anatomy charts and butcher’s diagrams and where they overlap. He turns, and lets Hickey bring a forkful of meat to his lips. The taste is rich, softer than he would have expected from years at sea, and he weeps as he swallows.

Hickey wipes away the tear with a thumb to his cheek. “Good boy. A good sir, indeed.”


End file.
